Coming Attractions: Raiding the Stacks

All right, all right, so this is a bit of a deviation from my regular posts, but I feel like I owe my two readers a little bit of an explanation before I start with this new feature I have in mind. So over the Crimbo season I got a bunch of money from relatives because it's easier for them to just give me money than figure out what I like. As I result I decided to get a Kindle Fire, partly because a number of authors we review send me e-copies of their books to read and I have a hard time reading books on the computer. Generally the temptation to run off onto the Internet and look up weird stuff on Wikipedia is really strong. Granted, the web-browsing abilities of the Kindle Fire that remains a kind of problem but it loads up faster than my computer and is easier to carry around. Also, I read a lot of books. Seriously, I'm running out of shelf space again and I got a brand-new bookcase like four months ago. Since I'm ostensibly trying to move out at some point, a Kindle is a really good choice for me because it's easier to move than a whole ton of books and a bulky bookcase.

What do you mean I'm almost out of shelf space again? I just got this one!

I should mention that I am a huge fan of physical books and deciding to get an e-reader was a hard decision for me. I love the feel of books, the smell, the physical presence of a stack of books. Maybe I'm an unapologetic biblophile but there's a certain substance to physical books that e-readers just sort of lack for me. However the benefits of significantly decreased space and the decreased costs of books make a very good economic decision for me at this time. What really sold me on it, though, was the availability of out-of-copyright books for free. Granted for them to be out of copyright they're generally over a hundred years old but there are plenty of books I look forward to reading for free with this feature. (If you're more a fan of the Nook than the Kindle, Barnes and Noble also has out of copyright books available for free.)

Among these out-of-copyright books are the works of Jules Verne and HG Wells, gentlemen I like to refer to as the grandfathers of science fiction. While the books that they wrote were not called science fiction at the tie, they definitely are precursors to the genre as it exists today and in some cases are excellent steampunk adventures. (Although maybe the fact that they were written during the Age of Steam excludes them from being steampunk but that's a debate for a different day.) Anyway I shall be bringing reviews of their books, and other novels, to the Arsenal in a new feature I call Raiding the Stacks.

 Just for future reference any book that I'm going to review for Raiding the Stacks first must be out of copyright and available through Amazon, if only for the technical reason I need to be able to get a copy of it for my Kindle. The other requirement I'm going to place is that it has to sort of fit in with the Arsenal's theme of awesome manliness and gentleman adventurers, or the genre of fantasy/sci-fi. While I certainly could go read Pride and Prejudice because it's out of copyright and available I sure as hell am not going to read it. Yes, yes, all you Mr. Darcy fangirls can yell at me all you want but I think you're in the wrong place. THIS IS A PLACE FOR AWESOME THINGS! NOT CRITIQUES OF ROMANCE NOVELS! NO WE MUST HAVE ADVENTURES! So you take your Jane Austen books and...read them somewhere else. Yeah. I showed you. What was I doing? Oh, right, Raiding the Stacks. I might also look at some books like Dracula, The Three Musketeers and Les Miserables because I'm interested in reading those books and they too are free. Granted with Les Mis if I get stuck I'm probably going to put it down, say at least I tried, and go enjoy the musical. And man, is that a manly musical.

As a final point I should say that a lot of these books, mostly written by white men in the 1800's or earlier, very casually make racist and sexist remarks. As a citizen of the 21st century I recognize that all forms of discrimination are wrong. (Except against robots. And elves. Hate those guys.) So I will recognize and admit that racist and sexist remarks will come up from time to time in these books as a product of their authors and the time period. Most of these remarks though are casual bigotry and fit in with the assumptions of the time period so I will not condemn a book because its author didn't know any better. That being said, if the purpose of a work is entirely to promote a bigoted standpoint, such as The Birth of a Nation, then I'm going to condemn it on those grounds. A significant number of books, even from when bigotry was cool, don't have that agenda so I'm probably not going to bring it up. Again, bigotry is wrong and uncool and I accept that people in the olden days did that, but I'm not going to condemn them on that point unless they're attempting to actively spread their bigotry through their work.

Anyway, next week I shall be looking at Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne which, while it doesn't have any sci-fi elements does have one man racing around the world on a bet simply to prove he can.

- Kalpar

Chinese New Year's Special: Kalpar's going to Revoluticon!

Good news, everyone! Over the past month I have been handling delicate negotiations with the programming staff of Revoluticon. For those of you that don't know, Revoluticon is managed by the fine people of Anime Punch who have faithfully brought us Armageddicon these past few years, which is a mighty fine anime convention. However they have decided to branch out and run an new convention called Revoluticon, in addition to Armageddicon, which specializes in things that anime fans would like but are distinctly not anime-related. Stuff like fantasy, science fiction, comic books and so on.

Now my loyal two readers are probably at this very moment saying, "But Kalpar! It's very nice that you're letting us know about this convention, but where does the Kalpar come into all of this?" Well, I'm very glad you asked that, dear readers, for you see the programming staff of Revoluticon have assented to letting me present a panel on the rich fandom of Warhammer 40,000.

I'll give you time to run around shouting for joy.

It's awesome, right? Okay, so I cannot say yet which day my totally awesome panel on 40k will be, however I can say for certain it will be happening, I will be present, and it will be awesome. Well, I hope it'll be awesome. Anyway, for those of my readers who have the time and inclination to attend this year and see my awesome panel you can register for the convention here. And I'll provide some basic information below.

Date: March 16th - 18th.

Location: The Ramada Plaza of Columbus, Ohio
               4900 Sinclair Road
               Columbus, Ohio 43229

Remember, registration closes on March 2nd so vote early and vote often. Wait...no. Register early. Yes, that's what I meant. 

Thought for the day:
Only in death does duty end.

Demonwar Saga by Raymond E. Feist

Practically a year ago, if any of my two readers were reading from back then, I reviewed a book called A Kingdom Besieged by Raymond E. Feist. My relatives were hoping it was some sort of political commentary on how the evil communists are trying to corrupt America, but that's neither here nor there. A Kingdom Besieged was, at the time, the newest book in what I discovered to be the ongoing Riftwar Cycle, which apparently has been going for thirty-odd years now with a book being published about once a year. Upon discovering that A Kingdom Besieged was just part of a much larger mythos I endeavored to find other books from the series. (Granted, my Discworld  and Song of Ice and Fire projects were still running full-throttle at that point so it kind of took a back seat.) The point I'm ultimately trying to convey is that I got the books of the Demonwar Saga, Rides a Dread Legion and At the Gates of Darkness and recently got around to reading them. Why did I pick those two? Well, they were available at the bookstore at the time and I wanted to read a complete saga rather than just part of it.

My overall impression from these two books is disappointment, but I want to explain that as well as I can. My first problem was that other than A Kingdom Besieged, this was my first foray into Feist's universe so I only understand the lore that is explained to me, I haven't read all of the other books for context. I believe this is worth mentioning because the book references the events of other, earlier books, and while some of these events are explained, I feel like there's information I am not aware of which I should know. Honestly it's fine for a book series to be that way but I now feel like anyone new to the series has to start at the very very beginning to have a complete understanding of the mythos. The only reason I consider it a weakness is with a series of over thirty books it can be intimidating for a new reader to even venture into the books.

My big issue is the plot of the books. In these two novels there are two main problems: the Star Elves or Taredhel are returning to Midkemia after centuries of living on other planets. What is more important, though, is that the Taredhel are only returning because their ongoing war with the Demon Legion is not going well at all and the last worlds of their empire is about to be overrun. Now, the Taredhel are unsavory characters themselves, but if the Demon Legion finds its way to Midkemia there's going to be a number of other problems.

In a way, the Taredhel represent a lot of what I dislike about elves. They created a planet-spanning empire, subjugating and exterminating numerous other sentient species in doing so. They're vain and arrogant, assume they're the best creatures ever and the lives of humans, dwarves, and even other elves are worth no more than the lives of animals. They're really big jerks and when the return to Midkemia to find it littered with humans they're determined to kill every single human on the planet to secure political domination. And there are a lot of humans who would be very unhappy if that happened. Anyway, some of the Taredhel elves realize they need the humans to help fight the Demon Legion but none of them are in positions of authority. Most of the ruling caste of the Taredhel are pretty okay with genocide and are planning to do it once they get this new city finished. It's a persistent problem that I worried about through the entire book but it's never addressed. I remember the Taredhel still being around in the next book in the overall series, but I'm definitely sure they hadn't killed all humans. So I'm left wondering what on earth happened with them.

The other main plot problem I had was the "Oh no, demons are coming and this evil wizard named Belasco is helping them!" plot. That's a really big plot point and a lot of time is spent discovering this, but the stakes keep getting raised every time the protagonists find out more. To clarify, the protagonists initially know nothing about demon lore or what Belasco's planning. His brother has an idea, but they're not sure. So they do some research and scouting to find out more information and discover that Belasco is in charge of a demon cult. Well, it appears to be a demon cult but there's more to it. Every time they find out more information about Belasco and demons the stakes get raised. And it keeps getting raised until the last third or so of the book. There's a denouement, but I felt like it happened so late in the book that we had no time to come down from the emotional level of the book. Plus, the demon plot overtakes the Taredhel plot in significance and leaves the Taredhel plot unresolved.  At the end I felt like these two books were sort of setting the scene for the next and final saga in the Riftwar Cycle, which kind of bothered me because I felt like the first book of that saga was setting the scene for the conflict as well.

I had a few other issues with the book, such as a couple of typos here and there but that's me being an editor. The other main problem I had was that there were points in the book where characters were discussing information that the reader already knew from earlier in the book. It's fine for characters to discuss information a reader might not know, but information they read a hundred pages ago? I realize it's new for the characters, realizing a Taredhel emissary has a secondary agenda, but the reader already knows the emissary has a secondary agenda, we don't need to be told again. Ultimately these books were for me a handful of Pringles, tasty and leaving you wanting for more but ultimately unsatisfying. I probably will read more of the Riftwar Saga by Mr. Feist, but I'm going to go back to the beginning with Magician so I have some idea what's going on. If I have any readers who are unfamiliar with Feist as well, I suggest you start at the beginning of the cycle as well rather than jump in the middle.

-Kalpar

Kalpar Lectures: Da Orks

Today I'm going to continue with the Kalpar Lectures series, which so far has been me explaining Warhammer 40,000 stuff to those who are unfamiliar with the franchise. And honestly, I've been in the mood to talk about the Orks. I don't know why, and since the orks never really go for much logic themselves it seems a perfect time.

To start, I'll talk a little about how the Orks play on the tabletop. I will admit that I have never personally fought Orks on the field or know anyone who fields the so a lot of what I'm going on is what other people have written on the internet and what information I can surmise from their stat blocks. Now, apparently like the Space Marines there are a lot of options available to the Ork player, however Orks have the advantage of being much cheaper in terms of points than Space Marines. (Don't expect to shell out less money, though. This is Warhammer 40k after all.)  Thus in a 1,500 point army you can field significantly more Orks and overwhelm your enemy with sheer weight of numbers. However, while Marines can do pretty much anything at least competently if not extremely well, Orks gravitate towards close combat. Orks are extremely tough and have a decent Weapon Skill which makes them well-suited to close combat, while having a fairly low Ballistic Skill. A common tactic is called the "Green Tide" in which a large number of Orks are sent towards the enemy battle line and engage them in brutal hand-to-hand fighting. The greatest appeal of the Orks, though, is their fluff material and status as the comedic relief race of Warhammer 40k.

When talking about Orks, it's important to mention their biology. Simply put, Orks are a splice of fungal and animal DNA by an ancient race of aliens to fight the Necrons. (The Necrons are a race of zombie robots who want to wipe out all life in the galaxy to appease their dark gods. More on them later.) As a result, Orks have very few organs to damage, the remaining organs are extremely hardy and they're green. Seriously, the reason Orks are green in 40k is because they're a type of fungus. Like most fungi, Orks reproduce by spreading spores constantly and they emit a large number of spores when they die. This means that in terms of population Orks outnumber humans by a significant margin, and any planet unlucky enough to be invaded by the greenskins will probably never really be free of them. What is even weirder about the Orks is that the mysterious precursors have hard-wired certain Orks to turn into Mekboyz and Painboyz, which practice engineering and medicine respectively. Well....what passes for engineering and medicine in Ork circles anyway.

An important thing to keep in mind about Orks is that their very race runs on a weird kind of psychology. Basically anything the Orks believe to be true....becomes true. Warbosses and Nobz, the leaders of Ork society, grow bigger and stronger because Orks that are in charge are supposed to be the biggest and 'ardest boyz around. Because Orkz never stop growing during their lifetime it's not unusual for an Ork Warboss to be nine or twelve feet tall. In fact Warboss Ghazghkull, one of the more notorious Ork Warbosses, apparently clocks in at over eighteen feet tall, all of it well-honed killing muscle.

The Ork gestalt psychology gets even weirder when you start looking at their technology. For example Orks believe that "red wunz go faster", and oddly enough vehicles with red paint do move faster. Most of Ork technology is scrap metal and whatever parts they can find, welded or bolted together in some semblance of the desired product, that somehow works. Many an Imperial enginseer has looked at a captured Ork vehicle, only to conclude that the ramshackle monstrosity shouldn't even be able to move, much less fight under combat conditions. Taken to its logical conclusion, as my friends like to joke, if you give an Ork a stick and tell him it's a gun, somehow the stick will shoot bullets.

The Ork mentality is very simple and straightforward: the Orks love having fun. The best way to have fun? Fight. I guess the point I'm trying to convey is that Orks love to fight all the time. If there isn't someone else to fight, the Orks will fight amongst themselves for any reason imaginable, including if they're just bored. Did I mention they love to fight? As far as the Orks see it, at the end of the day if they won, they won, if they died, then they died fighting and it doesn't count, and if they had to run away, well they can come back for another go. It may seem an odd mentality, but in the rather dark world of 40k it's downright optimistic.

Broadly speaking the Orks are divided into six major clans, each which have their own unique characteristics and wears a specific color. The clans are as follows:

•  Bad Moons: Wearing yellow, the Bad Moons are the wealthiest of the clans because their teeth grow most quickly. (Oh yeah, Orks use teeth as currency.) As a result the Bad Moons have the flashiest equipment and love the big shootas.
• Blood Axes: The only clan without a distinct color, the Blood Axes have the longest history of fighting the Imperium of Man. As a result they've begun to pick up tactics like camouflage and battle plans. As a result a large number of Warbosses come from the Blood Axes. 
• Deathskulls: Wearing blue because it's a lucky color, the Deathskulls specialize in looting equipment from the battlefield, sometimes even while the battle is still raging. As a result they have a large number of converted enemy tanks in their arsenal. 
• Evil Sunz: Orks who love speed, it's common to see an entire Evil Sunz army charging along on cobbled-together motorcycles and wartrukks. Because they love to go fast, and as you know, red ones go faster, the Evil Sunz often wear red themselves. 
• Goffs: The toughest of the Ork clans, the Goffs love getting into the thick of close combat. The Goffs wear black they consider other colors to be "un-Orky". 
• Snakebites: The Snakebites are staunch traditionalists and generally look down on using new-fangled technology. While other Ork clans might use armor and vehicles, the Snakebites use war paint and ride into battle on giant boars. Although less common in the more-developed Ork hordes, Snakebites are still a dangerous force. 

Usually the various clans fight amongst themselves, but on occasion a cunning Warboss can unite the various clans into a mighty WAAGH!, a mighty invasion of Orks which is best described as one part mass migration, one part holy war, and one part pub crawl. Any planet that finds themselves in the path of an oncoming WAAGH! is in serious trouble.

At the end of the day, the Orks are a brutal race that love to fight and get into trouble. However they're also downright silly, with technology as likely to harm them or break down as it is to actually harm their enemies. As dangerous and intimidating as the Orks are, I still find them kind of funny and their philosophy rather logical. In the Grim Darkness of the 41st millennium where there is only war, perhaps the Orks are the ones that have it all figured out. If you're going to die horribly on a battlefield, you might as well enjoy it, right? The Orks certainly seem to enjoy it, and they're definitely not going away anytime soon.

- Kalpar

The Man Who Crossed Worlds

The Man Who Crossed Worlds, by Chris Strange, is an urban fantasy e-book which is available both at Amazon and at Smashwords. I highly recommend all two of my readers go and check this book out.

Miles Franco is a Tunneler, someone who has the ability to open Tunnels between Earth and an alternate plane of reality called Heaven.  Granted, he's only able to use this ability around the city of Bluegate, and he could make a better paycheck working for one of the many gangs, but he values his independence and perhaps more importantly his skin. However, Miles gets caught transporting a family of illegal Vei immigrants from Heaven to Earth and the cops are threatening to put him in prison, a fate worse than death for a Tunneler like Miles. However, they're offering him a way out: a deadly new drug called Chroma is about to hit the streets of Bluegate. If Miles helps the cops keep Chroma off the streets, they'll let him walk. Provided he lives long enough for it to matter. Definitely not one of his better days.

Now, I have to admit that I did end up liking the book, however this does not mean I did not have a few problems with it. First, there is a pretty big plot twist, but it happens about halfway through the book so you kind of see it coming. Not that I minded the book going on beyond that point, the plot just seemed too nicely tied up for the book to be over. There were also a lot of descriptions of long-legged beautiful women in the book, which since I'm puritanical I was saying to myself, "Okay Miles, I get it, you like women. Now move, we got crime to fight! *pokes with stick*" Granted, since the whole book is kind of in that noir detective style, descriptions of beautiful women is par for the course. The only other problem I had was Miles seemed to get beat up a lot and go without sleep a lot to do the things he does in the book. I mean, even a Space Marine might have trouble going through what he did. But really that's just a minor point and my opinion.

Overall I feel like the plot takes a little while to kick into gear, but once it does it takes off at breakneck speed, which I felt was appropriate because they only had so much time to stop Chroma from getting to Bluegate. I also found the world that Strange built to be really interesting. Eighteen cities on Earth have a Bore, a large, permanent tunnel which connects Earth to Heaven. Certain people born around the Bores can create smaller, temporary tunnels between the two worlds and can also make Pin Holes that let them influence reality, but only around their home Bore. Many of these Tunnelers make a living moving goods and people both legal and illegal between Heaven and Earth. I also found the desperation, dilapidation and spread of organized crime throughout Bluegate to be believable.

The ending of the book was pretty open-ended and a note from Strange at the back said that another book is coming in 2012, so I look forward to more adventures of Miles Franco and more exploration of the world Strange has created. I highly recommend all my readers get a copy of The Man Who Crossed Worlds and check out a free short story called The Man Who Couldn't Be Bought.

- Kalpar

Civilization IV: Sid Meier Hates You

So over Christmas, I picked up Sid Meier's Civilization V on Steam's Christmas sale. (75% off, woot!), I have been working on playing through the game and getting the feel for it and learning how to properly take over the world in a hex grid as opposed to a squared one

Civ IV (top) vs Civ V (bottom):

Now with slightly different polygons than before!

Now the Civilization franchise has been around for ages; or more precisely, since 1991 with the release of the original Civilization computer game. While by modern standards, the graphics were laughably bad, for the time the game was rather innovative and made good use of that generation's engine and gameplay abilities. Not to mention founding a gaming dynasty that remains quite healthy over 20 years after the initial game was released.

Now while I am working on learning the ropes of Civilization V, I would like to take some time to pause and review the game that was my introduction to the franchise: Civilization IV. Like with Civ V, I picked up Civ IV during the Steam Christmas sale about two years ago as something to do while staying at my parents' house over Christmas break. I had seen a friend fiddling around with Civilization III a number of years prior and it looked pretty fun so I decided to drop the $10 and buy the whole Civ IV generation of games, which included the original Civ IV and a number of expansions as well.

In case you felt like this review needed even more Roman numerals

The Civilization series has a rather simple premise: pick a nation and guide it through the entire course of human history, from cavemen banging rocks together and fighting off lions and wolves, to the space age where you have the opportunity to launch a spaceship to colonize Alpha Centauri. A player chooses between one of a few dozen different leaders/nations each with their own traits, strengths and weaknesses and seeks to build an empire that dominates the world in some way or another.

The gameplay style is turn based strategy where one player acts on his/her own turn and then their opponents get their chance to act (given that your opponents are usually AI's, the wait time between turns isn't too bad). The game largely follows a "4X" style of gameplay: eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate. Essentially, one grows one's empire in order to gain access to land and resources and ultimately vanquish whatever enemies one encounters along the way. Turns consist of a variety of actions from city maintenance and construction orders, to improving the land the city uses to produce things, to diplomatic negotiations with rival civilizations, to moving troops around and capturing enemy lands.

Domination through a cunning use of flags

If this sounds a bit dry or a little too in-depth, I fully sympathize. Civ is definitely a game with a serious learning curve on it. The game does come with a tutorial which is helpful in giving a basic understanding of what buttons do what, and giving the player a basic introduction to turn-based strategy gaming. If you are new to the series or to the genre of turn-based strategy entire, then playing through the tutorial is a must. However, learning the game properly, like many things, is something you can only pick up through actual practice and several failed attempts. My hard drive soon became loaded with a number of half-finished games of me just trying to figure out what the hell I was doing and not trying to get murdered by guys with sticks. It is horribly depressing watching London get sacked by barbarians because you didn't know units could occupy the same square at the same time. True story.

However, I feel that the time investment to learn to play the game is quite rewarding once you get the hang of it and can stumble through a game without sabotaging yourself too badly, or even manage to win through some manner of competent strategy. I do wish to forewarn you that each game is a bit of a time sink depending on what kind of strategy you use to play through it (my early games ate up upwards of 8+ hours of play, though now I can usually clear though a run in about 5 or less). Yet, when all is said and done, there is a great deal of satisfaction in raising a nation from its infancy to it's overweight, greedy and bloated old age and knowing that it was your wisdom that ensured the Greeks were reduced to nothing but a fallout ridden wasteland because Alexander the Great had the gall to offer you Fish in exchange for one of of your Oil resources.

Psht. I get my fish and oil from the same tile. Don't need what you're selling Alex

Incidentally, if you like history then the Civilization series also offers something rather interesting: laughably amusing inaccuracies that are entirely your fault. Civ IV manages this in a number of ways, but to keep things brief I will only prattle on about one which amuses me particularly. In Civilization, you have a number of opportunities to construct various "World Wonder" buildings. These are buildings which you probably learned about in school at some stage, things like Stonehenge, the Parthenon, the Pyramids, etc. In terms of gameplay, they are terribly costly to construct, but they provide some rather substantial benefits to your civilization in return. The benefit one gains from it's construction is (very) loosely tied to the historical use of the wonder when it was originally constructed. For example the Colossus of Rhodes provides an increase in how much gold you get from your coastline; historically the Colossus was a beacon of trade in the Eastern Mediterranean. Hopefully you see the connection.

However, the humour comes about through the absurdity of some of the gameplay choices you might make. For example: You begin your game and choose to play as Queen Victoria of the English Empire. You begin playing and ultimately decide to build the Pyramids in... London. Now as a stroke of luck you have received one of the game's "Great People" who grace your civilization every so often and have a variety of uses. The one you happen to get is the Great Engineer Benjamin Franklin... Born in the year 2500 BC... in Newcastle, England... And you use him to quickly (rush) build the Pyramids in one turn of gameplay... Ow, My history hurts... However, I am willing to accept this is a quirk of the game that only amuses me and a select number of people (Kalpar included) who find historical inaccuracies to be causes of rollicking amusement, but I wanted to point it out all the same.

Hilarious

Now while I do have a lot of good to say about Civ IV, and it is truly a good game and has provided me with a lot of entertainment, there are aspects of the game that are quite frustrating as well. For one the game cycles through all your units on a given turn ensuring that you give orders to every unit that can do something that turn; while this is largely a helpful feature, and you would have to be insane to disable it, it often results in the game yanking control away from you when you are attempting to do something you wish to prioritize. It becomes frustrating to try and click on a particular unit, only to have the game wrest control away from you to tell a worker to continue building his farm.

Secondly, to oversimplify the game's combat mechanics, each unit has a base amount of strength and the game uses that value as well as random number generator to determine the outcome of battles (there are other factors as well, but we won't worry about those). While I understand that it is essentially an impossibility to translate battle tactics into a cloud of 1's and 0's, the random number generator seems to have an anti-player bias which allows for rather perplexing outcomes to battles. To put it another way, it is infuriating to have your helicopter shot out of the air by a guy with a 16th century musket. To put it another another way, Sid Meier hates you.

Accomplished with something that belongs in a museum

On a whole though, Civ IV is a game which I would heartily recommend to anyone who has an penchant for strategy gaming, and the time to invest in it. Hopefully, if there are any gamers in the readership, you might consider picking it up and giving it a try. Definitely not everyone's cup of tea, and there are some definite flaws in the game, but not the worst thing you could spend your money on either.

See? Much worse things you could spend your money on.

God save the Queen

- Carvan